Manage your subscription

And the walls came tumbling down: Old Testament writings ofdoom and destruction are now providing researchers with a record ofearthquakes spanning 4000 years

By AMOS NUR

At four minutes past one on the afternoon of July 11, 1927, a strong earthquake shook the town of Jericho in the Holy Land, causing cracks and fissures in buildings and the ground, and great panic among its people. The shaking was not confined to Jericho itself&colon; many cities and villages in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee suffered as well.

The earthquake was large enough to be recorded at seismological stations then in existence in Europe, South Africa, North America, and the USSR. Although these records were few, they were sufficient to provide accurate arrival times for the compressional waves generated by the earthquake. From these seismologists could determine the quake’s epicentre – the point at which the earthquake rupture motion began – its time of origin and its magnitude. The epicentre was next to the Jordan river about 15 kilometres north of Jericho, under the plain which extends north of the Dead Sea. The amplitude of the recorded seismic waves indicated an earthquake of about 6.5 on the Richter scale.

The 1927 earthquake at Jericho was followed by a series of aftershocks, many of which were also strong enough for their epicentres to be located. These aftershocks cluster along a line through the origin of the main shock and continue south into the Dead Sea, suggesting that land along the fault slipped to make the quakes run approximately from north to south within the trough drained by the Jordan river. Analysis of the seismic records using modern methods has confirmed this hypothesis and specified further details of the motion across the fault&colon; the land mass on the east side …